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Closer(2004)

R
Movie1h 44mEnglishDrama, Romance
7.3
User Score
66%
Critic Score
IMDb
Director: Mike Nichols

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Overview

A love story about chance meetings, instant attractions, and casual betrayals. Four strangers - with one thing in common: each other.

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Featured Comments/Tips

This is just another one of those movies every one is so high about but no one can really satisfactory explain why this is so great. In the end this is a plain and simple everyday story with a very confusing time frame. With unlikable characters (with the exception of maybe Alice) who act totally stupid.

i love me a strip club

This was a film that I was expecting to love but really didn't. I don't dislike this film at all I actually think it's a great film with phoneomeal performances and can very very real but also unrealistic at the same time.

WOW! I don't care for the premise of the piece but it gives a platform for a masterclass in acting. As I was watching it, I thought how it would make a great play. I’ve since discovered it was originally a play in which Clive Owens played his character on the London stage. The stellar cast must have been drawn to the depth of the characters and the emotional range that would be demanded of them. Their performances were spectacular. The acting deserves a rating of 10 (perfect) but the situations and the morality of the characters did not resonate with me, so I'm giving it a 7 (good) out of 10. [Adulterous Drama]

You can tell this was originally a play... I imagine it works better in that format.

It's so obvious that Dan and Larry are obsessed with each other, and that Anna and Alice should've ended up together.

most satisfing ending in a movie..... loved it Julia 'amp; Natalie my love birds

I honestly didn't get the message... Maybe you only understand love when you lose it. Great dialogue... The rest... Passable.

I liked the script and Natalie Portman's acting.

The performance of the actors is incredible, but that's about it. The timeline is confusing, and I can't understand the way the characters behave between scenes and how they change their minds so quickly. It's at least entertaining to watch, but I don't understand the message it's trying to convey in the end.

this did not age well in my life. for one, the blower's daughter gets cut. the most beautiful message comes in the end of the song, but i can see why it got cut for the movie. i don't remember when i learned this, but for sure i didn't care enough about such minute details back in 2004. but also, the whole drama, which may have made some sense to me when i never had a relationship myself before, became almost surreal! i can surely see too many people living such lives. fuck, i got 1y into a split up now (after 14y together, watching and rewatching many movies looking for inspiration), supposedly without games or lies (for sure none from my end). and, still, i don't see why we can't just get over so much drama! i guess the film does give a good portrayal of drama addiction. of which i got exhausted, even if i hardly ever watched soap operas. the end of the song can change everything though! enjoy.

'gt; "What's so great about the truth? Try lying for a change, it's the currency of the world." Unpleasant people: The movie! I couldn't believe I hadn't seen this yet and now that I have I have 2 thoughts. First thought is that these 4 really did acted their parts well in this and second... I felt nothing for them by the end. They are not good people!

would’ve been better if the two guys and two girls ended up together 3 but thanks for creating the titles of two awesome panic! at the disco songs

A so-so story. Given the case I expected more. https://ihatebadmovies.com

Featured User Reviews

Narate
Narate
0/10

"_What's so great about the truth? Try lying for a change, it's the currency of the world._" Unpleasant people: The movie! I couldn't believe I hadn't seen this yet and now that I have I have 2 thoughts. First thought is that these 4 really did acted their parts well in this and second... I felt nothing for them by the end.

**Menage a Quatre** You may like _Closer_ because of its flawed characters and their doomed relationships. I like it because it's square. The assorted combinations of love and friendship, scorn and resentment, among two males and two females are literally geometrical. Typically, the dependable love triangle pits three characters together, often a heterosexual convention establishing a male lead zig-zagging between two females, or a female lead choosing between two male suitors. What if we include an extra character? How many triangles can be made with four individuals? Four! And _Closer_ expertly covers them all. Next time you see it, draw out a square with each character occupying a corner. Then connect each of the couplings and triangles as they occur, beginning with Julia-Jude-Natalie. Jude falls for Natalie, introduces her to Julia who gets intimate with her camera. The Jude-Clive-Julia triangle is a clever one. Clive is introduced when Jude seduces him online pretending to be Julia who he meets at the aquarium. Often when a movie script or stage play adheres to a strict formula, it turns out flat and predictable. Not _Closer_. Applying a quadrangular network forces each character to cover all the bases, tagging up every way possible, pushing each juncture to the limit.

Writer "Dan" (Jude Law) likes to spend his evenings, when not with his American girlfriend "Alice" (Natalie Portman), teasing other blokes on sex-chat sites. One night he sets up doctor "Larry" (Clive Owen) with a promise to meet at the aquarium with "Anna". The horned up physician duly turns up, only to discover that meantime "Dan" has vengefully despatched the real "Anna" (Julia Roberts) - his part time lover/photographer, to unknowingly meet him instead. Embarrassed looks, sighs and "Larry" feels like a prat but, maybe the outwardly rather aloof "Anna" is interested? What now ensues is all a bit entertainingly far-fetched as an unwitting ménage-à-quatre emerges, becoming increasingly more intimate, then loving, then manipulatively toxic. Are any of these people destined to find happiness with any of the others. Quite frankly, do they deserve it and do we care? I've always found Owen as wooden as a washboard, but here - especially sharing the screen with an on-form Portman, he actually seems to be able to act (a little). His character, I found, comfortably the most odious of the four. Portman is the star of the show, though. Her portrayal of the needy sex kitten vacillates from provocative to desperate with a compelling ease. There's frequently some vitriol in the writing and the juggled storylines well paced as this story of unlikeable people moves along quickly. I think this might work well on stage, it has a characterful intensity to it, but on screen it's well worth a watch - even if it's all a pretty grim appraisal of human behaviour.

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